<p>Back in my day “parking” just meant “making out” and generally meant “petting” – but not necessarily intercourse (which “base” one got to varied with the parties involved and the nature of the relationship in general).</p>
<p>I don’t think it is day care or lack thereof. I think sexual experimentation goes on in every culture all over the world. It’s just that in America we are still so puritanical that we search for reasons why it might be happening instead of realizing that it is pretty normal. I think some of the riskier behavior may be due to lack of honest, open attitudes toward sex which have nothing to do with whether parents are working or not. Self-righteousness probably contributes too.</p>
<p>Unfortunately sexual experimentation is getting more and more dangerous with STIs and such…</p>
<p>“Hooking up” may be used to mean casual sex but in my daily life, I seldom hear it referred to that way. I think the article was written by an adult and hit on points that only pertain to a small percent of the teen population. It’s extremely unfair to say that the morality of our generation is lower than previous ones, and assume that all teenagers of today engage in casual sex (and drugs and alcohol, etc.) As we can see on CC, there are plenty of hardworking clean kids. In my school at least, maybe 2% of the population actually goes around having casual sex and racking up two/three digit counts of their encounters (and my school is in the heart of nyc, not some sheltered small town school). In any case, I just wanted to point out that the articles only concentrates on one end of the spectrum, and therefore exaggerates the “degradation” of today’s youth.</p>
<p>And for the record, I have never had any casual encounters (not even making out) and I am involved in a serious relationship and value intimacy greatly, even though I was sent to nursery school before I was 1yr old. Perhaps this contributes to my not-so-intimate relationship with my parents, but it certainly didn’t cause me to be more likely to have casual sex.</p>
<p>::Thanks:: for that description slugg. Big laugh in the down under over that visual.</p>
<p>Any more wedding horror stories?</p>
<p>Mine is more pathetic than humorous.
I was about 3 months pregnant when we got married although I had been having signs of a miscarriage ( strong contractions) for a few days.
My fiance and I were living together (at the time I was 23) and I was moaning that I didn’t feel good and I didn’t want to go through with it.
He was worried about putting everybody else out so we made it there in time, with me doing my makeup in the car mirror on the way.
I couldn’t find the shoes I wanted to wear so I actually was barefoot ( we had an outside wedding) and pregnant!
When we made it to the church for the reception, I really was having a lot of cramping, and had decided that obviously this baby was not going to stay in, so I gave up trying to be good and sat down with my friends and started drinking champagne.
My mother, clueless that she is, insisted on dragging me over and dumping me with my mother in law and her sisters. After they made several snarky comments about how being pregnant doesn’t hurt and coworkers who drove themselves to the hospital to deliver their babies, I escaped and went back to putting my feet up and wondering if I made a huge mistake.
I eventually did expel the fetus two days later, another traumatic event but I will spare the details.
What really made this time ironic is that many years later, it came out that my mother in law had been pregnant with my husband when she married a hundred years before! ( Her kids found out the same time I did- priceless)</p>
<p>When I posited the day care connection I was trying to pick one example of a large societal change that might impact intimacy. Certainly did not mean to hurt feelings. It might very well be something else; the media is probably a big part of it too. </p>
<p>There was plenty of casual sex 30 years ago, too, but the part that seems weirder now is this “servicing” thing of 14 year olds doing one-way oral sex or any other sexual act where there is no reciprocity. That doesn’t sound like experimentation as much as a bizarre expectation.</p>
<p>Not to worry SBmom–long time posters know your ponderings were just that. Ponderings.</p>
<p>I am sorry if I flew off the handle at your ponderings. It is just that I have seen almost every undesirable trend seen in today’s kids blamed on day care and/or working mothers. In my personal experience, I have seen both highly involved and uninvolved mothers among those who work and those who stay-at home, and both well-behaved hard-working students and badly-behaved unmotivated students who have mothers in each group. I think it is very easy to throw out as a theory that day care and working mothers are the cause of every societal problem, without any evidence. It gets tiring to hear this over and over again.</p>
<p>Don’t worry, your post was a far cry from “flying off the handle.” :)</p>
<p>Your point in #148 is valid too-- many kinds of mom in each genre! </p>
<p>Obviously uninvolved/detached parents do damage whether at home or at work.</p>
<p>Can we now get back to Did you Meet Your Spouse in College?</p>